36
Isa
Ihelped one of the women from the basement to her feet when she stumbled over a tree root. The woods surrounding us were thick and pressed against my sanity, blocking out the light from the starry sky above our heads. The trek to the boundary where SUVs waited to take us to the plane that had landed just outside of Pavel’s radar seemed never ending.
“Not much farther,” Joaquin promised.
Even able to see the lights of the house in the distance, the colorful spires of the towers and unique architecture, it seemed like we walked forever. That was probably more due to the weak women who made the journey with us, than the actual distance. The fact was that many of them couldn’t handle contact with the men who would have helped them, if they weren’t too traumatized to accept it. Faye had taken up a place at my side to help get the women away from the danger of a burning building, but we were only two women, and there were so many survivors who needed us.
Gabriel watched her as intently as he watched me, seeming to understand that she would fade into the woods the moment he took his eyes off her. I wasn’t sure what his interest in her was about, but I didn’t get the impression she would be walking free anytime soon.
Even after Rafael was done with her.
Joaquin watched her with growing curiosity every time I interacted with her. Her face was stained with the ghost of her tears, of the splitting of her soul when she’d sung to her brother while he bled out in her arms. Whatever the price should have been for what she’d done, she’d more than paid for it in my mind, especially with her action that led to the blood trickling down the deep gash in her arm.
Gabriel closed the distance between them, ripping fabric from the hem of his shirt and tying it around the wound as they walked. She pointedly ignored him, not so much as sparing a glance for the man who seemed to want to tend to her, even though she should be his enemy.
Obsession blurred all lines of right and wrong.
“Just a little farther,” I murmured softly to one of the young girls. I hoped my words were true. Her face was too pale, drawn too thin for the youth that she was. She couldn’t have been any older than I had been when Rafe first spotted me, but her eyes held the wisdom that came from seeing the world as it truly was.
Full of horrors that no child should ever endure.
The ground shook beneath our feet as we walked, a deep rumble that seemed to come from inside the earth itself.
Whatever remained of the birds on the property fled from their trees, taking to the sky as I stumbled and went down alongside the girl in my place between Joaquin and Gabriel. The woods around us were eerily silent despite the mass of men surrounding the group of women at a careful distance.
I spun on my hands and knees, looking back to the house where I’d last seen my husband. The lights in one of the spires seemed to crumple inward, until they rested on the ground itself. The breath left my lungs as I lunged to my feet, watching as the corner of the manor collapsed.
I bolted forward, slipping through the press of women on their knees where they’d fallen from the force of the shaking ground.
My feet couldn’t carry me fast enough. They couldn’t keep up with the panic pressing on my lungs. Arms wrapped around my chest, hauling me back and pinning me against a broad chest. “Let me go!” I shrieked.
“There’s nothing you can do,mi reina,” Joaquin urged, lifting me off my feet. I thrashed my legs, clawing at his arms in a desperate bid to get free.
“Rafe!” I screamed, trying to twist my head to look back at the house where I’d left him.
I left him.
The thought of a life without him in it was unbearable, and I knew I could never go back to who I’d been before. I’d never be the Isa who did what her father told her, and I didn’t evenhavea mother to boss me around any longer.
Death was everywhere. Waiting to take everyone I loved until there was nothing left.
“Shhh, Isa,” Gabriel murmured, his face filling mine as he cupped my cheeks in his hands. He leaned his forehead against mine as I struggled in his brother’s grip, kind eyes holding mine. “I’ll find him. Not even death could keep him from you.”
Joaquin barked orders at some of the men lurking at the edge of the group, and I watched from the corner of my eye as they nodded and turned back. They led the way, jogging back toward the crumpling house we’d only just escaped.
To find the man they all followed by choice, the man who held their utmost loyalty.
I sobbed, stilling my body as his words penetrated, feeling the truth in them and shocked by his proximity to me. Gabriel guided my hand away from Joaquin’s forearm and to my stomach. Pressing into the bump there, he reminded me that even if Rafe was gone, there was still something to live for.
I nodded, tears streaming down my cheeks as he pulled away and turned to follow the group of men who’d gone back to search. He spared one last lingering glance for Faye, pointing a finger at her intensely.
“Do not make me hunt you down, Little Thief,” he ordered, and then he sprinted back to find my husband.
“I want to wait,” I said, turning to look at Joaquin as he released me finally.
“We keep going. For them,” he said, looking at the women all around me. They needed to feel safe, and standing in the woods, still trapped on Pavel’s property wouldn’t offer them that. I nodded, swallowing past the grief looming and threatening to render me incapable of functioning.